Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Theology of the Body and Medical Care

My article, "The Theology of the Body: Some Reflections on the Significance For Medical Professionals," which was in the Linacre Journal of the Catholic Medical Association (May 2006), is available online. Here is the abstract:
Is man just a "ghost in a machine," or is the body something other than a mechanical structure extrinsic to who we are as persons? What if the body is the necessary communication of the spirit and a necessary expression of the self. What if the body is not only that, but also a word from God Himself about Himself and about who we are? What impact would such an affirmation have on health care in the United States and in the world?

Monday, May 17, 2010

Marquette Dean Crisis

I don't wish to comment at length on the dust-up at MU over the offer and withdrawal of a contract to Jodi O'Brien for the position of Dean of Arts and Sciences. As you can expect, I can't even fathom how the offer could have been made in the first place.

Unless Marquette and other Catholic universities do something to revitalize the Catholic intellectual tradition on their campuses, they are doomed. Offering a high level position to academics such as Jodi O'Brien will undercut any effort to do so. If anyone wonders what the difference is between a place like Marquette and a place like Notre Dame, this is it. Notre Dame takes the public and explicit manifestation of its Catholic identity and the Catholic intellectual tradition. quite seriously (although clearly not perfectly!). Even if the facult as a whole isn't throroughly grounded in the Catholic intellectual tradition, places like Marquette need something like Notre Dame's Center for Ethics and Culture, or Maritain Institute, or Medieval Institute, etc. .

One of the best sources of documentation of both sides of the controversy, albeit from a strongly anti-O'Brien perspective, is the blog of Political Science professor John McAdams, The Marquette Warrior. I am especially glad that Drs. Del Colle and Johnson of Theology and Drs. Ashmore and Ibáñez-Noé of Philosophy and made the statements they did.